Guy Lodge Film CriticFilm festivals have been the primary hatching-ground for Oscar contenders ever since the Academy’s tastes shifted predominantly from studio to independent cinema earlier this century — though in the international feature category, this has been the case for far longer.
Rare is the non-English-language nominee that captures voters’ imaginations without a profile boost from one of the major fests — you have to go back to 2008’s Japanese sleeper “Departures” to find a film that won without an assist from Cannes, Venice, Berlin or Toronto.This year, with the festival circuit largely back to business as usual after the disruptions of the pandemic, a vast number of submissions in the category are hot with festival buzz, with.
Read more on variety.com